Can Singers Like Rihanna & Beyonce Influence Black Designers

Chances are, if you flip through a magazine—any glossy magazine, there are styles somewhere in between the pages highly influenced, if not explicitly, by black culture in America and abroad. And you’ve probably seen an article or five about the billion dollar figure (inching towards the trillion mark by 2015) that Blacks contribute as far as their buying power, yet little to show for such an astronomical dollar amount, well, besides stuff. Stuff that will be deemed ill-suited by the year a trillion is spent on more stuff.

If you’re an unfailing contributor to that billion dollar price point, more than likely you are plugged into what’s taking place in the big apple: New York Fashion Week, where top echelon designers with an inclined knack for panache gather to flounce next season’s must-haves. Guess who is not in the building? Black designers. While we make up for the numbers in the audience we’re barely backstage as designers getting well-deserved props for those influenced designs.

Black culture being a huge influence within the fashion industry is nothing new. But being hugely underrepresented where it truly matters is getting old.